k vs. k

KH

I have never been so aware of my misery,
never held the shape of it in my hands and known
its color, width, breadth, so acutely, and this
clarity is compounded by past experiences which
drag me into uncertainty. in fact, I have known all
along the mystery, but afforded myself the luxury
of putting it away with the other cobwebbed relics
of common sense and sanity. someday I’ll come
back here looking for an old feeling and will
find these broken smiles to remind myself.
I know this – I know what happens – I have seen
the descent, I feel it beneath my feet and knocking
knees and I have heeded myself. I am pausing
just to remember, to learn, like reliving
the past will eradicate it.


KC

you pressed first though you didn’t know it
I breathed fast as a summer breeze, wasted not a moment
to absorb the inches of your features.
then I knew

you to be beautiful by the measure of your voice,
a burning light baritone, and the steady smile you gifted
carefully. I began to see our differences
match

your measure where I rush, faith in place of
moxy. I project loudly. and I pressed back, to your
knowledge just a brush, a flicker in a
meadow.

you may see a sea from where you stand but
my eyes among many are thieves for you only.

for P255 - Personality & Voice ("Pride of the Philippines")

It’s like my tiya Shang says:
“Lub neber pails.”
I got this idea man –
I’m just full of
so many damn ideas –
if I could just
get this one right,
you know
it’d change stuff.
Hand me that sauce
over there, yup.
Lolo says I can split
the tip with you ‘cause
your car’s gonna smell like
crispy pork. Anyway
who’s asking Rin
to prom? I heard
Beckett. That’s some straight
bull. Dude touches her I’ll go
all Manny Pacquiao
on his ass, right, all,
“Pride of the Philippines”
til he learns to
treat a lady right.
Remember when
I did it for you?
That was hi-larious.
But dawg this pig’s not gonna
fit in your scrawny trunk –
you bringing this lil’
thing to school? –
put it in the back seat,
we gotta go before
this feast gets cold. Ya know
if I was at your school
I’d be bumpin’ Weezy
everyday. Becoming
a “murse.” Yo that’d
be sick if we went to
college together
if I went to college.
I’ll come see you bro
don’t even worry about it,
you know my tiya
Shang says love never fails.

strife of the innovator

That's sort of the thing with the world,
you get older and you think
with the freedom from getting in
trouble for the truth everyone
will be open
and
not fear it.
but then we have fear of
disappointment and failure
that fuel the fire of disillusionment
and over time this process has become and infrastructure so big
that those that chose to work outside of it are insignificant 
and find them selves lonely in crowds
and competing for naught

those of us that are outsiders are punished with our own doubt
minds clouded by the economic wrath on our innovation
the social wrath on our exclusive radical nations
hurt because we are an after thought this great 'haven'

Broken after the cruel thick humoring of our brain children
 that don't stack the capital and promote diversification
Unsteady once our children can hardly eat off our slave wages
The youngest of us looking to soffocate the light of the spirit that
  differentiates us in an effort not to feel empty

I feel like a swordsman with a sword that lacks in reach.
He is a nomad because there is no place he can see to lay his head.
She sees no reason in competing in a race when she is not a runner.

But we have no place.
 we are alone

for Poetry 255 - On Love

Love
was that time I ruined
one whole side of the car. Love
was when I threw up from
dawn ‘til dusk on
someone else’s birthday.
Love was tracking mud on the tile
forgetting to scrub the bathroom and
leaving my lunch behind on the
first day of 8th grade.
Love was that time I went 87
in a 70.
Love was awake when I came home late
(love was, every time).

Love was then &
love is,
love is,
love is.

cloudless

There's never been much of a LIE
I've chosen not to tell

And it used to come so easy.

It takes the devastation of the simplest
of misinformations and intentionally
misattributed words, craftily placed
for a heavy fall
from
grace.

to make one believe the TRUTH is all
there is.

I used to think it was so WRONG
when people
said things
that weren't
true

but we are a culture of soothsayers
and peoplepleasers

we say yes when we mean unequivocally no

we tell lies because the truth is abrasive or evasive

and maybe the LYING is WRONG
and I've known it forever

but I LIE to me
everyday.

and it makes me feel closer to the TRUTH
like I know we want to feel.

oh how we stray.

for Poetry 255 - laced

my fifteenth birthday I got
cash so I drove to the mall
where I was bought
by the ugliest pair of shoes I could find.
Vans. Canvas Classics
in red, obnoxious.
sunny.
mom gave them a look-down,
tight lipped.
from then on
they owned me.
I laced ‘em
beneath the tongue &
we were off!
two dozen
concerts, someone else’s beer
sloshed on them,
a thousand dusty days
of high school and down to the
downtown of Detroit where I wore them
until they didn’t squeak,
they scraped, and stuck
particularly well
to the backs of
church pews
and skate boards.
Oh they knew the Holy Spirit and the holey
rawness of skin
versus pavement!
size 8 devils wrapped
in rubber and
trouble, gorgeous
fence-scalers,
treasure excavators
and ditch
explorers.
filthy.
my nineteenth birthday I got
the hose, sprayed
those tomes ‘til they let
the dirt loose but
left the
stories intact.

for Poetry 255 - child's play

there’s the clatter of my sword
on the driveway, followed by a fat silence
as two warm trails converge
into one glossy, livid, fire-engine red
path that tumbles down my lips and chin and neck and
gets clamped hard
between my fingers, still oozing slowly.

he is pale and startled. in his hand rests
a broomstick – a makeshift
lightsaber today, magic staff tomorrow,
and the current weapon in question.
fiddleheads of paint are peeling from the handle.
there is shame in his face, but I am awed.

soon he props a bag of ice against my nose,
telling me that we can pretend
I survived an alien invasion,
Empire attack, and meteor shower
all at once.
you got the wound to prove it, he says,
and you are a hero!

ten years pass and I can’t pick a pair
of glasses that fit quite right – they’re always
cocked a notch to the left –
but things are never what they seem,
and I wonder if he knows
the gravity of how he shaped the way I see.